It used to do more: Sony’s flip-flopping PS3 history

Ars takes a look at Sony's history of promoting, removing, and then dismissing …

The news that Sony is being sued after removing support for Linux from the PlayStation 3 serves as a reminder that the console has changed quite a bit since its release. While we have a new, slimmer version of the PS3, many of these changes have come as a result of Sony removing features that were once heralded as selling points for the console. Sony doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind about what is important and what can go. Here's a look at how the company's stance has changed as features have been dropped.

Rumble

When Sony originally unveiled the Sixaxis—the original PS3 controller, which supported motion support but not rumble—Phil Harrison, former head of SCE worldwide studios dismissed the importance of rumble, saying:

"I believe that the Sixaxis controller offers game designers and developers far more opportunity for future innovation than rumble ever did. Now, rumble I think was the last generation feature; it's not the next-generation feature. I think motion sensitivity is. And we don't see the need to do that. Having said that, there will be specific game function controllers, potentially like steering wheels that do include vibration or feedback function—not from us but from third parties."

But when Sony settled its lawsuit with Immersion and released the Dual Shock 3, its stance on rumble was much different, as the company released a statement saying "The new controller will also benefit PS3 content creators, by giving them the ability to further expand their creative imagination."

This flip-flop was even acknowledged by Sony. Phil Harrison played politics to try to downplay Sony's old stance about rumble. "As to previous statements that I made; we were in a lawsuit—what do you expect me to say? We were in a lawsuit. We were in litigation. Of course I have to defend our view. And actually, I still truly believe that having the Sixaxis controller the way it is is the best way to control games. And I think that we're looking forward to working with Immersion going forward, and who knows where that is leading us."

Backwards compatibility

The PS3's predecessor was an enormous success, and it boasted one of the largest libraries of any game console. So the ability to play all those games on the new PS3 was a big selling point. "PSone runs on the PlayStation 2 through emulation rather than actual hardware. PlayStation 3 will offer the same compatibility for PS2 software and the format will continue forever," Ken Kutaragi said back in 2003. Backwards compatibility has long been touted as a major selling point of PlayStation hardware, allowing gamers to enjoy their existing catalog of games.

"Backwards compatibility, as you know from PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, is a core value of what we believe we should offer," Phil Harrison said in 2006. "And access to the library of content people have created, bought for themselves, and accumulated over the years is necessary to create a format. PlayStation is a format, meaning that it transcends many devices—PSOne, PS2, and now PS3."

When the feature was dropped from new models starting in 2007, SCEA president Jack Tretton said "backward compatibility is a nice secondary consideration, but it's far from the number-one priority."

And there appears to be little possibility that it will return, as Sony's John Koller told Ars. "It's not coming back, so let me put that on the table. But it's all people ever talk about! It's not as big as a purchase intent driver as you may be hearing. We've got such a substantial lineup of titles on the PS3; most people are buying the PS3 for PS3 games. They've buying it for PS3 games and Blu-ray movies. That won't be returning."

Linux

Which brings us to the removal of Linux. While not necessarily a huge selling point, on several occasions Sony did boast about the feature. In 2006, Harrison said that combining Linux support with the PS3's other features essentially made the PC obsolete.

"We believe that the PS3 will be the place where our users play games, watch films, browse the Web, and use other computer functions. The PlayStation 3 is a computer. We do not need the PC."

That stance was repeated multiple times. Phil Harrison stated "One of the most powerful things about the PS3 is the 'Install Other OS' option." Sony engineer Geoffrey Levand wrote to a PS3 mailing list in August 2009, "Please be assured that SCE is committed to continue to support for previously sold models that have the 'Install Other OS' feature and that this feature will not be disabled in future firmware releases."

But once the PS3 was subject to "security concerns," presumably related to the console being hacked, Sony wasted no time in removing the feature.

"This feature enabled users to install an operating system, but due to security concerns, Sony Computer Entertainment will remove the functionality through the 3.21 system software update," the company stated. "In addition, disabling the 'Other OS' feature will help ensure that PS3 owners will continue to have access to the broad range of gaming and entertainment content from SCE and its content partners on a more secure system."

What's next?

What is most concerning about Sony's constantly changing stance is that it could be setting a dangerous precedent: features that once may have sold you on a console could no longer be available once you actually purchase it. Sony's history of making flat, declarative statements only to directly contradict themselves is troubling, and should be remembered. The PlayStation 3 has gained and lost many features, but the take-away is that all statements made by the company should be looked at critically, with the past flip-flops kept in the front of your mind.

What I don't believe is that people kept buying the Xbox360, a Microsoft product, the same company that gave us Windows and IE, a product with 50%+ failure rate, over and over. Just because they could keep sinking money into it with the help of their Windows and Office cash cows.

Would you buy a TV with such a high failure rate, no matter that the manufacturer would return it?Would you buy anything with such a high failure rate?

Consumers just have shown that they don't really care about the total cost of ownership. Xbox360 = PC. Low initial cost but keeps breaking down so you spend a lot of your time fixing it. Which means very high total cost of ownership.

PS3 = Mac. Well designed hardware. Reliable. Higher intial cost but comes with more features and doesn't break down. Over the life time you have lower cost of ownership.

I'm not sure how it's a precedent -- let alone a dangerous one -- considering this is common practice for pretty much every technology company. What's especially telling is that the article covers seven years but only manages to scrounge up three examples... and only one of them is an actual removal of an existing feature from hardware you already purchased (rumble was an added feature and backwards compatibility continues to work fine on my PS3)... and that one example is solved by just not updating. Holy hell, the sky is falling.

Side note: is it just me, or has there been a significant increase in the amount of poorly-researched alarmist bashing from technology blogs lately? I'm not singling out any one site here. It's ridiculous.

Let me say this I love my 60Gb PS3. Its almost perfect with its 4 USB ports the card readers I use regularly the PS2 compatibility and I couldn't think of a much better device to put under my TV . (It could be a bit more quiet for movies). On the other hand a game console is simply a different market than an entertainment system and I think the PS3 sits awkwardly between the worlds in some regards.

I still do not get why they are not able to make a Sony product wide "iTunes" store for example. If they had a class of products that could access it, from high-end TVs to HD players to the PS3 as some kind of flagship they could have conquered the living room.

If they had sold a PS3 with DVB-C tuner (instead of the useless DVB-T PlayTV) and HD players with the similar excellent UI and media capabilites but without the gaming they could have made a killing. How about using cheaper Cells for those? I heard Toshiba planned to do that. They could bring the amazing functionality they put into the PS3 to all their devices. But no the otherwise amazing high-end TV of my parents still takes 5 seconds to load a picture and its XMB interface is ugly and slow as molasses.

But no instead of a consisting strategy of reusing technology it looks like their TV business, their PS3 teams and their HD Recorder teams are working completely divided from each other sometimes looking over the border and trying to do some half-asses integration.

As long as it plays games, you know - the MAIN reason people bought the thing for, that is all that matters.

If you quizzed the 20-odd million people who bought the PS3 and asked them, Did you buy the PS3 for Games or Linux, then make a graph for the results, the graph for "Games" wouldn't fit on this page, whereas the graph for Linux would look similar to this _

So, why Sony should really give a damn is totally beyond me. Oh, and this Suing culture has turned into a complete joke.

Wow, it takes a true fanboy to turn an article about Sony's broken promises into a diatribe against a platform that wasn't even mentioned so much as one single time in the article. Congratulations. Let me tell you my problems with Sony.

First, my PS2 died right after the warranty period expired. I sent it to them and paid to have them fix it, figuring that it would be cheaper than just getting a new one. It was, but just barely. A few months after I got it back, it died again in the same way--DVD drive stopped working--and they wouldn't fix it again without me paying through the nose again. I told them no thanks.

Next, I had a home theater system that died on me. The DVD changer/player stopped working. I couldn't load or play DVDs. It was within the warranty period, so I sent it back to them. They took over TWO MONTHS to fix it and send it back to me, and when I got it, it had a nasty scratch down the left side of it that it didn't have before. Less than a week after I got it back, the changer stopped again, so I sent it back again, and it took them another six weeks to fix it again. At that point, I was out over three and a half months--over 25%--of my warranty period. Then within a few days of the one-year warranty (again, of which I didn't even have the system in my possession for over a quarter of) expiring, the center channel blew on it and emitted a excruciatingly loud wailing sound. They refused to fix it without me paying yet more money on repair costs. I ended up taking the damned thing to the electronics recycling place and being done with it.

When you add that in with how they screwed people by putting rootkits on CDs and how they're screwing people now by actually removing features and breaking promises on the PS3, needless to say, I'm permanently done with Sony, and whenever any family or friends are in the market to buy consumer electronics, I be sure to tell them to steer WAY clear of the brand.

Would you buy a TV with such a high failure rate, no matter that the manufacturer would return it?Would you buy anything with such a high failure rate?

Me. I bought 4 over time mostly driven by hardware failures. Never considered sony for a second. This was at the same time as i was replacing all the pc's in my house with Macs. Xbox live is what you are buying in the MS world for me. Sony has nothing to touch it. It is the main differentiator.

What I don't believe is that people kept buying the Xbox360, a Microsoft product, the same company that gave us Windows and IE, a product with 50%+ failure rate, over and over.

Wow, can you substantiate those numbers with a link?

Quote:

Consumers just have shown that they don't really care about the total cost of ownership. Xbox360 = PC. Low initial cost but keeps breaking down so you spend a lot of your time fixing it. Which means very high total cost of ownership.

PS3 = Mac. Well designed hardware. Reliable. Higher intial cost but comes with more features and doesn't break down. Over the life time you have lower cost of ownership.

Again, wow, your bias is showing here. Mac's may be better built than your average PC, and may also last a little longer, but not by the chasm that you've built here.

People may complain about the so called Sony bashing articles but this should not be forgotten. How many times are you allowed to take features that people have paid for away before it becomes print worthy? Sony seems to be really unorganized in what it wants to accomplish. The PS3 could have been a system that would be unbeatable but now the door is open for other companies. So sad for Sony.

What commenters seems to forget and only the author seems to see is that this is a dangerous practice. Forget that this is about Linux and think forward. Lets say you buy the brand new Playstation 4 which Sony has just rolled out, it is every thing you ever think you wanted and it plays PSOne, PS2 and PS3 games through emulation. Sony goes out of its way to say that this is finaly the console to do everything and the emulation support will be there for ever. But oh-noes some one figures out a way to hack the console by utilizing the Emulation support for PS2/3 games, suddenly Sony removes the support stating that few people us it and the console is really for playing PS4 games would this be ok? No, you paid for the feature and they can't remove it at theire leisure, we as consumers should stand up for our rights since we paid for it!

But please don't trot out the idiotic slippery slope argument. That's one step away from worrying about Sony releasing a firmware that will disable USB ports. The fact is Sony has added many, many widely used features in their numerous firmware updates and after 3 years are dropping support for a niche feature that never caught on like anyway, and only in the interest securing the platform. No hardware features have ever been eliminated in this fashion, only through transparent revisions to the way the console was manufactured which, incidentally, greatly reduced the price. Rumble was actually added, so that doesn't even support your thesis. Even without OtherOS, the PS3 is still the most open console ever made, with it's broad support for bluetooth devices, USB storage, upgradeable hard drives, DLNA and a built in web browser that includes Flash. Spreading FUD about what Sony might take away next is simply irresponsible.

"Low initial cost but keeps breaking down so you spend a lot of your time fixing it. Which means very high total cost of ownership."

Really? I've had the same PC for 3 years now, and I don't have to spend a lot of time fixing it. The reason so many people have issues with PCs is ignorance. They willingly install "free" games from bullcrap sites or surf shady porn sites and wonder why their computers quit working. These are probably the same people that drive around for a month with the check engine light on.

As long as it plays games, you know - the MAIN reason people bought the thing for, that is all that matters.

If you quizzed the 20-odd million people who bought the PS3 and asked them, Did you buy the PS3 for Games or Linux, then make a graph for the results, the graph for "Games" wouldn't fit on this page, whereas the graph for Linux would look similar to this _

So, why Sony should really give a damn is totally beyond me. Oh, and this Suing culture has turned into a complete joke.

As a 100% agnostic console owner (I really don't care too much for console gaming), I'll say for games I really prefer the X360 - better online component, which makes a huge difference. Initially the X360 had the jump on library size, etc. which is why/how people got "locked into" the system with lots of games. Even after the hardware was failing, they wanted to stay with the system.

It's not to say the X360 is perfect - far from it. But, it makes a pretty darn good gaming system.

I will admit, Microsoft made great decisions with a highly polished Live implimentation and included headsets. On the rare occasions I play my PS3 (not for dislike of the console, but I rarely play games that aren't on PC anymore), it's so quiet when you're online - nobody uses a headset, and if they do, the quality is horrible. Much different than the X360, where things seem more social.

Now I just own my PS3 to play BluRay, I gave my refurbed 360 to my brother-in-law for his 21st Bday present (with 4 X360 games and like 8 Xbox1 games!).

I'm tempted to get the X360 again, though - the PSN speeds at where I live are freaking slow as hell and there's nothing I can do to improve it. I don't rent movies over my PS3 because it takes a day to download it. Don't even think about trying to stream anything, and sometimes Netflix "HD" movies stutter.

I've got a TV to sell you. It has a built in DVD / Blu-Ray player, and will play absolutely every disk format and you can watch every channel you want! It's £5000

2 years later... Hi again StevB70. Just to let you know that we're turning off support for DVD as it's old and nobody makes DVDs anymore, and because someone's making hacks for Sky subscription workarounds, we're disabling Sky too. You can now watch Freeview and Blu-Ray disks, and terrestrial analog TV until that's turned off by the broadcasters. No, you're not getting your £5000 back, or the money for your DVD collection. Oh, and if you don't upgrade and get this latest security fix, you won't get any new Blu-Ray disks to play. Ever.

What I don't believe is that people kept buying the Xbox360, a Microsoft product, the same company that gave us Windows and IE, a product with 50%+ failure rate, over and over. Just because they could keep sinking money into it with the help of their Windows and Office cash cows.

Would you buy a TV with such a high failure rate, no matter that the manufacturer would return it?Would you buy anything with such a high failure rate?

Consumers just have shown that they don't really care about the total cost of ownership. Xbox360 = PC. Low initial cost but keeps breaking down so you spend a lot of your time fixing it. Which means very high total cost of ownership.

PS3 = Mac. Well designed hardware. Reliable. Higher intial cost but comes with more features and doesn't break down. Over the life time you have lower cost of ownership.

Xbox 360 is the worst thing to happen to gaming.

I'm trying to figure out what's more impressive: the fact that you completely ignored the actual story here in order to go on a tangent and bash a product that's competing with the one the article's about, or the near total lack of actual facts used when you did.

First, the 50%+ failure rate. It's not. The absolute highest estimate of it that I've seen, taken from a survey handled by a gaming magazine (which is honestly a terrible metric), pegs it there. Every single other estimate I can find is far lower, including those derived through surveys, with the most reliable being the 15%-35% or so gap most often cited. A third of them being prone to failure is still excessive and unacceptable, but it's nowhere near the number you claimed.

Second, your comparison of the 360 to PCs. Saying that PCs have a "low initial cost" is questionable at best. Some PCs do, but costs on them vary - there are systems you can get that'll run you less than half a grand and there are systems that cost several times more than the most expensive Mac you can get. Gaming machines, and particularly pre-built gaming machines, tend towards being expensive rather than cheap, and whether or not they "keep breaking down" depends entirely on who you buy them from, what parts are used, and how well you take care of them. In any case, you don't seem to have any understanding of how much (or rather, how little) actual maintenance PCs involve.

Third, with regards to PS3s being well-designed and reliable hardware. Well-designed I can't argue, it's a subjective point. Reliable? Hardly. Most of the estimates I've seen (aside from those provided by Sony, and yes, I can provide sources for this) peg the PS3's failure rates at around 8-10%. Not as bad as the 360's, sure... but a one in ten failure rate isn't something I'd tout as "reliable" (especially not when the Wii, which always seems to be left out of these comparisons, boasts its absolute highest estimates as being still below 3%). And as far as more features? That's fairly easy to argue against, but I'm not going to get involved in an attempt to actually split up which features each system has and try to evaluate how much each one's actually useful. Instead, I'm going to point out the obvious: whether or not their hardware is particularly high-quality (I don't really think it is), Microsoft's software tends to be very, VERY well-made. The obvious point there is that Xbox Live blows Sony's online platform clear out of the water.

So that leaves the claim that the 360 is the worst thing to happen to gaming. EA (not now, but in the past), the consolidation of major developers and publishers until only three main publishers basically dominate the market (EA, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft), piracy and the ridiculously over-the-top countermeasures against it, the deaths of who knows how many genres (including genres like interactive fiction or point-and-click adventures, which were probably the ones most intent on providing a focus on storytelling), the general devaluation of games that DON'T have much focus on storytelling by the gaming public, ballooning costs of game development that have led a lot of larger publishers and studios to focus less on innovation and diversity and more on sequelization and profitability, a growing disregard for actual consumers by the companies producing both games and consoles... of all the things you could have picked, a single console that's in second place by a gap of over 30 million units is the worst thing to happen to gaming? Astounding.

Sony outed as a two-faced corporate bastards? The real bad they did with the PS3 is using hardware in the Cell that's ridiculously complicated to develop for rather than offering simpler, cheaper and even more powerful hardware with a good grounding of software support. With that software support in place, then they might have actually delivered on some of their complete pie in the sky promises...

More to the point, both the 360 and PS3 are looking dated in the face of 1GB+ GPUs, 4-8GB standard RAM desktops, and a 3.2GHz PowerPC (be it 3-core G5 or Cell variants) isn't exactly in the same league as a 3.2GHz Nehalem. After 4 years, surely it's time to think of the 'next' next generation hardware.

Oh, you didn't make money from the consoles? Not our fault, Sony & Microsoft. Should've kept it simple, stupid...

There are more PS3 features that were dropped along the way: There was support for playing SACD (Super Audio CD) on 1st gen PS3 that was dropped in the newer consoles.It is kind of weird that MS keeps adding features to the XB360 and, at the same time, Sony keeps cutting features for each new iteration of its console...

What commenters seems to forget and only the author seems to see is that this is a dangerous practice.

Considering that Sony did not remove backwards compatibility from existing PS3s (mine continues to run old games just fine), I'm baffled as to why you would base your argument on something with... absolutely no precedent. And this is exactly what I'm talking about.

"Sony's history of making flat, declarative statements only to directly contradict themselves is troubling, and should be remembered."

I'm sorry, but is this a shocking revelation to the author? Every company does this all the time. One of my favorites is "The issue is not at all widespread and only effects a handful/few/small percentage of our customers" which is used even when it's known that every one of product XYZ is faulty.

They've also removed SACD support, flash card slots, and reduced USB ports. The Slim did finally bitstream HD audio though. Still, seems like they've cut a lot more platform features than they've added, which only makes one wonder where they'll go from here.

It's still a nice platform, but they're "it only does everything" ads do inspire more eye-rolling than nods of agreement.

Oh, you didn't make money from the consoles? Not our fault, Sony & Microsoft. Should've kept it simple, stupid...

Oh, Microsoft most definitely made money off the 360. Even sales of the actual console have been making cash on their own for some time now, ignoring sales of peripherals, games, XBL subscriptions and other related products. Sony I'm not as sure about (the consoles themselves still don't make money for Sony, but the losses on each console are minor at this point and they have other sales to rake in cash from as well), but it doesn't matter if they made any money on the PS3. They used it to make Blu-Ray adoption rates grow far, far faster than they would have otherwise, killing off competition very quickly and growing a huge market base for their other products. Really, calling either company "stupid" isn't very sensible at this point.

imikedaman wrote:

Considering that Sony did not remove backwards compatibility from existing PS3s (mine continues to run old games just fine), I'm baffled as to why you would base your argument on something with... absolutely no precedent.

You just pointed out that one of the examples mentioned in the article doesn't really provide precedent for this... while at the same time completely ignoring the example actually mentioned in the comment you were quoting. Removing "Other OS" is precedent for other things they may do in the future, and at the very least it does show that Sony's willing to outright remove features from their consoles if they believe those features are exploitable for anything that could lead to piracy. Whether or not it's something they've really done often doesn't change the fact that it's something they shouldn't have done at all, nor the fact that it's troubling that they have done it.

Xbox360 = PC. Low initial cost but keeps breaking down so you spend a lot of your time fixing it. Which means very high total cost of ownership.

PS3 = Mac. Well designed hardware. Reliable. Higher intial cost but comes with more features and doesn't break down. Over the life time you have lower cost of ownership.

Xbox 360 is the worst thing to happen to gaming.

Weird, my PC hasn't given me any problems at all in the two years I've had it. And that is through three different OS installs, XP, Vista, and now 7. My iPhone in that time has had to be replaced twice, my iPod shuffle twice and my iPod touch once.

The Xbox is not a perfect console, and the red ring of death is truly annoying if you've gotten it but it has added several new things to consoles that were great. I love my Xbox even more than my wii (which has sat there collecting dust since I beat Super Mario Brothers). I guess that makes me a bad gamer.

Next on the agenda: Let's see, people don't really watch Blu-ray movies on the PS3, so they should remove that feature too. Except it wasn't a feature to start with, it was just a bonus extra. Not like they advertised it as a Blu-ray player or anything.

Then Sony should remove the game playing ability from the PS3, turning it into a shiny piece of plastic to take pride of place in your living room. After all, that's where the future is, and those at Sony believe this is going to be where they are positioning themselves going forward.

While I hate that Sony has chosen to do this with Linux, as someone that exclusively uses the PS3 for games and movies, I appreciate it at the same time. I suspect a large reason for killing Linux support is so that they can give the software devs the warm and fuzzies. They want reassurance that it's a secure platform. I buy content for my PS3 pretty regularly; too regularly if you ask my wife. We [people who actually buy games] really don't want the PS3 going the route of the PSP. No one wants to makes games for the PSP anymore because the piracy rate is so high and software sales are so low. Sony said last year that they were courting devs to bring them back to making games for the PSP. I'm not seeing it... The PSP hardware sells pretty well (well, not the PSP Go, but the platform overall is somewhere well north of 50 millions sold), while software sales are still in the toilet, rarely charting anything in Top 10 sales lists despite the large hardware install base.

Frankly, I'm pretty surprised that Ready At Dawn is doing another God of War game on PSP. It's been ages since anything of note has released on the PSP. GT and God of War are the last two games I've bought for my PSP (not counting PS One classics on PSN which I primarily play on PS3) and I can't think of anything else on my radar for games to get until the next God of War game comes out. It's a pretty barren wasteland for the PSP. My local Best Buy and Target stores only have a tiny little section left for PSP merch now. Blink and you'll miss it.

You just pointed out that one of the examples mentioned in the article doesn't really provide precedent for this... while at the same time completely ignoring the example actually mentioned in the comment you were quoting.

1. If you want to install it then don't update your firmware. They never promised endless free firmware updates anyway, and it's not exactly the "system you purchased" anymore after you choose to install new firmware.

2. It's not a precedent when they aren't even close to the first ones to do something like that. Try playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live or an MP3 on your Wii.

At one point in my life, I was excited about this console before it was officially released. The Cell processor, backward compatibility, and online offerings nearly made me drool. Once released, the price was just too steep. I couldn't believe Sony wanted $700 for this console, so I waited, knowing the price would come down.

Well, it did, but so did the features. It's as though with every price break, a feature is removed. Once backward compatibility was lost, that was it. The PS3 would never grace my entertainment cabinet. I'll stick with my PS2 until my game library is completed. I still have PS2 games in their shrink wrap.

I may not game as much as I had in the past, but firing up a PS2 is a reminder some things are better left unchanged. A Blu-ray player in a gaming console makes as much sense as a kitchen sink in the backseat of one's car and everyone knows never to use the console's player for movies given it burns out the motor faster.

I don't know what happened with Sony, a once-leading electronics company, but I no longer care.

The saga of SACD on the PS3, while a far less popular feature, is a far better example of Sony's attitude here than PS2 backwards compatibility. The V2.00 firmware added the ability to convert the multi-channel SACD signal into DTS surround over the Toslink optical output, which significantly expanded the number of people who could play SACD surround titles. There are plenty of receivers that decode DTS over Toslink, certainly more than will handle high resolution multi-channel over HDMI.

And then firmware V2.01 took that feature away. So anyone who bought a PS3 after V2.00 came out, expecting to use that feature, was almost immediately screwed in the same way Linux users are being treated now.

Finally, SACD support was dropped altogether on the newer hardware. While this didn't remove it from the older models already purchased, it did halt development on the associated firmware. The expectation of users of this feature was that eventually support for full SACD over HDMI would be implemented, that Sony just hadn't gotten the firmware compatibility issues sorted out yet. But once the feature stopped shipping, there's obviously no more improvements being made.

1. If you want to install it then don't update your firmware. They never promised endless free firmware updates anyway.

You're... joking, right? You must realize how ridiculous of a suggestion that is. You're basically saying that I should make my PS3 completely useless for any Playstation Store purchases I've made that I don't currently have installed, for any access to any online services for the PS3 whatsoever, and for future PS3 game releases... and trying to act like that's a REASONABLE alternative?

I'm... no. Just no. I'm not even going to try to take that seriously.

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2. It's not a precedent when they aren't even close to the first ones to do something like that. Try playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live or an MP3 on your Wii.

Precedence has absolutely nothing to do with who did it first. If you're going to deny that the term applies, at least make sure that you know what the term actually means.

Ceasing to run an online service for a console that hasn't been supported for nearly half a decade is one thing - they haven't actively removed anything, they've simply stopped running servers for a service that's gone mostly unused for years outside of a single game. Replacing MP3 support in a specific piece of pack-in software for your system in order to add support for an arguably superior audio format because you're revamping that piece of software entirely is one thing - you haven't removed the ability to play audio system-wide, you've just replaced support for one format with another in a single piece of software that you're making major upgrades to. But actively removing a feature while providing absolutely no alternative whatsoever with the specific intent being to prevent homebrew software from being run on your console? That's a different situation entirely.

More importantly, consider the differences in reasons here. Microsoft stopped supporting Xbox Live for the original Xbox because it was a money sink - it was costing them money, and it was a system-wide service for a system they haven't supported since 2005, being used pretty much exclusively for one game, so they simply stopped offering it. Nintendo removed MP3 support in the Photo Channel to replace it with support for a superior audio format (which is boggling, but hardly worth a lot of criticism). Sony went out of their way to patch the Other OS feature OUT of their consoles specifically because it MAY have led to homebrew running on their system. THAT'S what makes this troubling - not what they did, but why they did it. Obviously, acting like they'll remove support for major features like Blu-Ray or games is insane... but what happens if Life With Playstation turns out to be exploitable for running homebrew code? What if their web browser has a security flaw that does the same, one that can't be easily patched out? Who's to say that Sony won't take the same steps to prevent access to their system that they've taken with Other OS?

When PS3 came, I really liked how it seemed to embrace both backward compatibility and linux. Honestly, the approach felt so unlike the usual last two decade of Sony's "we'll give you the greatest running shoes in the world, but you can wear them only on your hands" approach.While the linux support never seemed good, it was good enough and I know more than one person who bought it new or used just because of that. Not me.

I now own one of the slim versions, bought with the full knowledge that it would never have backward compatibility or linux support. I don't have PS2, never had it, but I saw how good its games could have looked on an older PS3. Sony's loss, not mine, since I'll now never buy a single overpriced PS2 game: I might have and probably would have. I would play a lot more if PSN store was available in my country; it was very stupid of me not to have suspected that this fabulously advertised feature was not global, I thought it was just exercise in screwing up Europeans and the rest of the world with the poorer content compared to NA and Japan. After the removal of "Install other OS" feature, I feel kind of comfortable with the knowledge that Sony cannot change for the better and that it can screw you no matter what.

Sony, I have a weakness for you. No matter how hard you mess your customers up, you always mess your own products worse. So many of them have the potential to be the best, to be new standards, and yet you always manage to cut them down. Looking at your decadence makes me melancholic for all the great things that could have been, but never will.

You're talking about the same company that gave us Windows and IE6,7,8.

MS makes crappy software and even worse hardware. The only reason the Xbox360 survived was due to them being able to sink money into it via Windows and Office.

Had any other company release a console with such a high failure rate with no such peripheral income, he would have gone bust. But for some strange reason consumers keep flocking towards the inferior product instead of buying something superior like the PS3.